Cold Coffin (11 page)

Coffin knew enough about how things went to know that Jack Jackson was being nursed in high security, one constable outside the room and another by the bed. If Jack came back to life, he was a valuable witness.

Coffin knew where this room would be, third floor, but he checked at the central desk first. Yes, said the pretty young woman by the computer, he had it right. She looked at him with interest.

He made his own way up in the lift. The man sitting on the chair outside Jack's room was looking bored, but he knew Coffin and decided to jump up and look alert.

Coffin nodded at him, then went into the room. Jack lay in the bed, tethered to it by tubes and a machine with a flashing red light. He had seen it all before. He had never seen Black Jack look like this though: white and shrunken, yet with his face oddly puffy. His eyes seemed to be submerged in swollen flesh.

What thoughts are you having, Jack, if you are thinking at all?

He turned to the constable who had been sitting by the door. ‘Has he said anything?' Coffin looked at him. ‘Denton, isn't it?'

‘Yes, sir . . . No, he hasn't spoken. Muttered a bit, just sounds and grunts, nothing you could make anything of.'

A nurse appeared through the door, a tall thin girl with spectacles and bright red hair. She gave Coffin a disapproving look. ‘It's the Chief Commander? Would you like to see the doctor? I can get Dr Peters.'

Coffin refused this offer. From what he knew of hospitals, he guessed that a busy young doctor would not want to add a visit from the Chief Commander to his day. In any case there was little to say about Black Jack, whose hold on life seemed tenuous. The only thing in his favour that Coffin knew from experience was that you could not trust him to go either way. Unpredictable was what he was.

A trolley escorted by a nurse and pushed past him by a man in a pale blue tunic went down the corridor. The occupant of the trolley had closed eyes. Coffin hoped he was still alive. As they passed, the nurse gently drew the sheet over the patient's face.

The trio got to the row of lifts well before Coffin, who decided to use the stairs. There seemed less morbidity there.

Three flights to the ground floor, as he knew well. He was not alone: on every floor down he passed nurses and the hurrying figures of doctors who, he was interested to see, no longer wore the white coats as seen in films and soap operas. Time moves on.

Each floor was noisier and livelier than the last. Clearly if you were about to die, you went up to the top floor to be quiet about it.

He would probably be transported up there himself one of these days, hopefully to come down again. There were plenty ready to take a poke at him. Almost every week letters breathing hate and threats arrived at his office. Stella knew about them in general but not in particular, unless they seemed important. Nothing at the moment as far as he knew, although it was always his belief that the worst threat came without a signed warning.

Joe and his team, Sam and Matilda, saw him through the glass door on the ground floor.

‘There he goes,' said Joe. ‘Coffin.'

‘Sort of good-looking in his way,' ventured Matilda, who was an expert in masculine good looks. ‘Attractive. Don't you think so, Sam?'

‘Oh, I suppose so.'

‘You know what,' said Joe. ‘I reckon he's the sort of chap who grew into his face. You have to have stamina to do that. It's a long-lived face,' he ended thoughtfully, leaning on the large vacuum cleaner that was his power symbol. Joe fancied himself as an expert on physiognomy.

Sam kept quiet, but he judged himself an expert in faces; he wanted to remind Joe that no one lived for ever.

No one had a sharper sense of the ease and unexpectedness of death than Coffin. His work forced it upon him. In the old days, he had gone to many a post-mortem as the senior detective in charge of a murder investigation.

Phoebe Astley was waiting for him. ‘He's just started. We can go in. He's talking a bit, so it's not one of his silent days.'

‘Oh,' Coffin nodded. ‘Good.'

‘Seems he knew Dr Murray. She used to come to talk to him sometimes about skeletal structures. He knows the husband too. Not sure how. Not over hair, I shouldn't think.'

Coffin reminisced as they walked in and the familiar odour of disinfectant and dead bodies reached him. It was interesting, he thought, how this smell, which had been banished when the new buildings first came into use, had now come back. ‘He doesn't mind doing the PM? He could have got someone else.'

‘No, quite matter of fact about it. He wants her killer caught, though, so he shows that much emotion.'

Coffin felt oddly glad about that: he did not want Dr Murray to be cut up too coldly. Professionally, yes, but with some heart.

It was soon done. Everle was a quick worker, aided by an efficient assistant, a young woman he was training.

He came over to them when he had removed his gloves and gown.

‘She was shot in the back of the neck. The gun was 9mm; the bullet, had, of course, been removed already for forensics to work. Just the one shot. She died quickly, from massive blood loss. You will get the full report, of course.

‘And, yes, in case you were going to ask: similar method of killing as Janey Jackson and her daughters.'

On the way out, Coffin said, ‘We might have to add Jack Jackson to that list. He had a gunshot wound in the neck from the same type of gun.'

‘I went in to see him,' Phoebe said in a carefully neutral voice.

‘I thought you would. I went myself.'

‘I don't think he'll pull through.' Her voice was even more carefully expressionless.

‘He might.'

She really cares for that chap, he thought. That was the trouble with Black Jack; he was likeable. Unreliable but loveable. Damn him.

He had always been careful not to dig too deep into Phoebe's complicated emotional life, partly out of respect for her privacy, but as much for fear of being dragged into it, as he had been once, years ago. They had worked together often in the past, and it was the Chief Commander who had persuaded her to leave Birmingham to join his Force. They had had differences of opinion here and there, but he hoped she had never regretted the move.

She was a good detective and a loyal friend. Hang on to that thought.

Behind him, Phoebe said, ‘Look who's there.'

In a car outside, Natasha and her husband Jason and Margaret Murray's husband Dave sat together, watching.

They knew what had been going on inside.

‘I expect he wonders how we knew the hour and the day,' said Natty. In fart she worked three days a week at the medical library, and she knew and was known by most of the staff, from cleaners like Joe and Sam to the Chief Librarian himself.

She had not wanted to come.

‘I needed to be here,' said Dave.

‘Sure,' said Jason. ‘We understood, didn't we, Natty?' He wound down the car window and nodded to Coffin.

‘We don't have to speak to the police,' said Natasha. ‘Not now, not at this minute. It's private.'

Coffin walked over.

‘We don't have to introduce ourselves, do we?' Natasha was aggressive. ‘And we know why you are here. Do the police always attend?'

‘Usually,' said Coffin mildly.

‘But not the big boss himself.'

‘Pipe down, Natty,' said Dave. ‘She's upset, Mr Coffin. We all are, but we wanted to come . . . well, I did. It's a part of mourning.'

‘I understand.'

‘Well, maybe. I reckon you have to have it happen to you in your own body. You were there in the way of business.' He was not so friendly as he had seemed at first.

Coffin did not answer.

‘So, what was the verdict? Or do we have to wait for the inquest? There will be an inquest?' Definitely not friendly now.

‘There will be an inquest,' agreed Coffin. Then he stopped.

‘Of course,' said Phoebe from behind. ‘Dr Murray died from a gunshot wound from a 9mm revolver.'

‘Just one?'

‘Yes,' said Phoebe. ‘I'm sorry.'

‘Didn't take much really, did it?' said Dave. ‘Just one little shot and she was a goner.'

‘We'll get the killer,' said Phoebe.

Dave wound up the window, put the car into gear, and drove off.

‘Thanks for taking over,' said Coffin to Phoebe.

‘I was afraid you were going to say we had no idea who the killer was and might never find him,' said Phoebe.

‘I was terrified myself I would do just that.'

Coffin put Phoebe in her car and walked back to his office the same way he had come.

If he took a pace or two to the right, he would come to the place where the pool of infant heads had been found. If he looked hard he could see the roof of the house in Minden Street where Janey Jackson and her two daughters had died. And on his left was the university block where Dr Murray had been shot.

Murder all around him, but what he could not see were any answers.

The murder of Dr Murray had to be linked to the murders of the Jackson family. Why it was necessary or desirable or good sport to kill Black Jack as well, Coffin could not decide.

He remembered the collection of infant skulls arranged around Dr Murray, as if in imitation of those found earlier.

There was the blood all around her, not all hers.

Blood and bones, that was what this case was all about.

On impulse, he walked round to the excavation where the infant Neanderthal skulls had rested. The water had drained away from the pit, which was now dry and neat. Two workmen were busy arranging a plastic covering. One man was tall and very thin, the other short and square.

‘All tidied away, sir,' said the tall one. ‘The vicar came along and said a prayer over them. Couldn't stop him.'

‘Perhaps he was right,' said the short man.

‘They'd been dead a long while. Too late to do them much good, I reckon, Jigger.'

‘No,' said Jigger. ‘You don't know about time, do you, sir? It may go round in a kind of circle so that it was always today for those little kids.'

Coffin accepted this without smiling, not sure where to put his feet in this philosophical mud. Vague memories of J.B. Priestley's three time plays, which Stella had produced and starred in, rose in his mind. ‘Could be, I suppose.' It certainly was not a day he wanted repeated. Come to think of it, he wasn't sure he wanted life repeated at all.

‘Don't think I want to be stuck here with you for ever,' said the tall man.

‘We wouldn't know. Always a fresh moment in time to us, Pete, no matter how many times we went round.'

‘See what I have to put up with, sir?' complained Pete.

* * *

Back in his office, Coffin called Phoebe Astley. ‘What's become of the infant skulls?'

‘Being looked after at the university. It seems they are of great archaeological importance.'

‘And the other, newer skull?'

‘That's different. Forensics still have it.'

‘I see.'

No you don't, thought Phoebe, I can tell it in your voice. You're cross.

Coffin was not cross, but he was puzzled and depressed.

‘What about the blood found with Dr Murray?'

‘The blood that was not hers?'

‘Yes.'

‘Well, there we might have something . . . The hospital has an HIV clinic, a check is being made on the blood groups of any that matches the blood . . . When we get them, then we can interview all the names.'

He thought about it. ‘What happens to blood? It doesn't just float around loose.'

‘I asked about that, of course. If there is any quantity of blood, it is bottled. Sometimes it is washed and liquid is added, and it is used if a transfusion to that patient is necessary.'

‘The blood is important,' said Coffin slowly.

Phoebe made a grunting assent.

‘How do you rate it? Are you and your team coming to think of it as a serial killer at work?' Who might never be caught? He did not say this aloud, but it was there in his voice.

‘It's coming that way,' admitted Phoebe.

7

Saturday still, and on to Monday
.

Stella was waiting for him, and the little cat was on a cushion in a small basket. It looked new.

‘I bought them for her,' said Stella proudly. ‘The vet said I had a natural touch with her. He's one of my fans.'

‘I bet.'

‘Comes to everything I perform in.'

Coffin looked at the very pretty and, he had to say, expensive-looking basket and cushion. ‘Did you buy the basket from him?'

‘No, of course not, but he told me where to go in the covered market. An animal charity has a stall there; the profits, or some of them, go to the charity.' . The kitten sitting up in the basket looked a good deal better but was still giving Coffin a cold stare. Which was hard, he thought, as he was the cat lover.

‘Watch it, cat,' he said. ‘You're only here on approval.'

‘Oh no, she isn't.' Stella was quick. ‘This is her home • now.'

‘And she's not pregnant?'

‘He says not.' Stella was quick to pick things up; she now sensed that all was not well with Coffin. ‘What is it? Is Black Jack dead?'

‘Not as far as I know.'

‘So what is it?'

‘It's a bloody, violent business that I can't see the way through. That's not how it usually is with me. I'm used to knowing the way. I don't mean I always know the answer, because I don't, but I always feel the way to go.'

‘All the deaths are the work of one killer, aren't they, though?'

‘Yes, I think so.' He sat slumped in his chair; the kitten from her basket stared at him.

Stella came over, stroked the cat, then touched Coffin's forehead. ‘You are a bit hot.'

‘I'm not ill,' he said irritably.

Stella looked at herself in the looking-glass over the fireplace and smoothed her hair. ‘I'm off to the theatre. I have a production meeting. Shouldn't last more than an hour. We'll eat when I get back. I'll leave you to look after the cat.' At the door she added, ‘There's cold chicken if you get hungry and can't wait.'